Rice University materials scientist Pulickel Ajayan has been named a fellow of the National Academy of Inventors. Ajayan will be one of 148 people inducted in a ceremony at the organization’s annual meeting April 10-11 at Space Center Houston.

Pulickel Ajayan

Fellows are nominated by their peers for their spirit of innovation in creating or facilitating inventions that have made a tangible impact on quality of life, economic development and the welfare of society, according to the academy.

Ajayan is a fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, the Royal Society of Chemistry and India’s National Academy of Sciences and is a foreign fellow of the Mexican Academy of Sciences. He has more than 900 peer-reviewed publications, more than 80,000 citations and an h-index (a measure of the impact of a scholar’s publications) of 142.